Introduction:

New Criticism is a very different literary theory. First introduced in the early 20th Century in America by
John Crowe Ransom, New Criticism was created out ofthe formalist movement. It focuses on the
importance of close reading a piece of literature, mainly, poetry to understand how it functions as a
"self-contained ' object. It was created to show an alternative form of literary analysis, with most
generally focusing on this history of the author, the relation of the words used to foreign on ancient
languages, as well as comparative sources, ignoring the aesthetics of the work altogether.

Analysis of poem in the light of New Criticism:

Basic principles:

One way to get at these principles, and begin to see why they have remained so appealing, might be to
look at a famous poem written about the time that New Criticism was emerging as a critical force. This
poem is of particular interest because it is about poetry, attempting to define it, advising us how to view
it. Thus it seeks to provide a kind of guide for criticism: “Here is what poetry ought to be,” the poem
says; “read it with these standards in mind.” Widely anthologized in introduction-to-literature texts
since its appearance, the poem not only reflects the ideas of a nascent New Criticism, but it also
probably helped to promote those ideas over several generations.

Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb.

Silent as the sleeve.worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has gmwn-

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

Leaving. as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Memory by memory the mind

A poem should be motionless in dme

As tho moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sear--

A poem should not mean

But be.

The poem is startling from its opening lines, asserting that a poem should be “palpable and mute.” How
can a poem possibly be “palpable,” or “capable of being handled, touched, or felt” (American Heritage
Dictionary)? Whether we think of a poem as an idea, or a group of ideas, or the writing on a piece of
paper, or a group of spoken words, none of these seems to be the sort of thing we can handle. And how
can a poem be “mute”? Isn’t a poem made of words? Don’t we at least imagine a voice speaking the
words? Suggesting that a poem be mute seems a bit like suggesting that a movie be invisible, or a song
be inaudible, or a sculpture be without shape. But MacLeish reiterates these ideas in subsequent lines,
saying explicitly that a poem should be “Dumb,” “Silent,” and (most amazingly) “wordless” (lines 3, 5,
and 7). He uses comparisons that reinforce particularly the idea of being “palpable.” In comparing the
poem to a “fruit,” for instance, MacLeish suggests that the poem should be a real thing, having
substance. The idea that it should be “globed” (a “globed fruit”) emphasizes the three-dimensionality
that MacLeish desires: like a globe, the poem should have more extension in time and space than a map
or a picture. Not just a depiction of a fruit, it should be a globed fruit. Likewise, “old medallions to the
thumb” and “the sleeve-worn stone / Of casement ledges where the moss has grown” are both not only
“silent” or “dumb,” but they also have an enduring solidity, a tangible reality. These images of fruit, old
medallions, and worn ledges may also seem a bit mysterious, like “the flight of birds” (line 8), which in
some “wordless,” seemingly magical way is organized and orchestrated—as anyone knows who’s ever
seen a flock of birds rise together and move as one, silently. From lines 1–8, then, we draw our first
principle of New Criticism:

☞ 1. A poem should be seen as an object—an object of an extraordinary and somewhat mysterious

believes that poems shouldn’t change. Aren’t Shakespeare’s sonnets the same today as they were when
he wrote them? (“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to
thee,” as Sonnet 18 says.) But MacLeish’s comparison, “As the moon climbs,” is not so easy to grasp:
how can the moon be “climbing” through the sky, yet “motionless in time”? Perhaps the answer lies in
the repeated idea that the moon, like the poem, should be “Leaving, as the moon releases / Twig by
twig the night-entangled trees” (11–12); it should be “Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves /
Memory by memory the mind” (13–14). Something that is “leaving” is neither fully here nor fully gone; it
is caught in time and space, in an in-between contradictory timespace. We do not notice a memory
deteriorating: it is there, unchanging; then it is only partly there; then it may be gone. The moon
climbing in the sky does seem like this: it appears to sit there, motionless in time, yet it is leaving and will
“release” the trees. MacLeish repeats lines 9–10 in lines 15–16, as if his own poem is motionless,
continuing on but remaining in the same place it was. This paradox adds to the mystery of the earlier
lines and also suggests a second principle:

☞ 2. The poem as silent object is unchanging, existing somehow both within and outside of time,
“leaving” yet “motionless.”

Lines 17–18 offer a third surprising idea: “A poem should be equal to: / not true.” It’s difficult to believe
that MacLeish is saying that poems should lie. But what is he saying? Lines 19–22 appear to explain his
point, but these lines seem particularly difficult. What can these lines possibly mean—ignoring for the
moment the concluding assertion of lines 23–24, which seems to be that poems ought not have
meanings? The lines are obscure basically because the verbs are missing, so our task of making sense
must include imagining what has been left out. First MacLeish says, “For all the history of grief / An
empty doorway and a maple leaf” (19–20). If we look closely at this statement, its form is familiar and
clear enough: “For X, Y.” Or, adding a verb, “For X, substitute Y.” Thus, I take these lines to mean simply
that instead of recounting “all the history of grief,” the poet should present instead “An empty doorway
and a maple leaf.” An empty doorway can speak to us of someone departed, conveying an emptiness
and an absence that may be more compressed and intense than an entire history of grief. A maple leaf,
perhaps lying on the ground, bursting with fall colors inevitably turning to brown and crumbling, may tell
us something about loss more directly and powerfully and concisely than any history book

The next two lines are similarly structured: “For love / The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea.”
That is, “For love,” an abstraction, impossible to grasp, the poet should present something concrete:
“The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea.” Although I can’t say precisely how the grasses and
lights here stand for love, somehow as images they do seem romantic, mysterious, moving. This
principle of selecting something concrete to stand for an abstraction had already been advocated by T.
S. Eliot in 1919 in what turned out to be an extremely influential opinion for the formation of New
Criticism: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art,” Eliot said, “is by finding an ‘objective
correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of
that particular emotion” (124–125). Not surprisingly, throughout its history New Criticism has been
especially concerned with analyzing the imagery of particular works, noticing how a poem’s “objective
correlatives” structure its ideas. It is not then that the poem should lie, but rather that it does not strive
to tell the truth in any literal or historical or prosaic way. Poetry, MacLeish is saying, should speak
metaphorically, substituting evocative images for the description of emotions, or historical details, or
vague ideas. Instead of telling us about an idea or emotion, literature confronts us with something that
may spark emotions or ideas. A poem is an experience, not a discussion of an experience. The final two
lines summarize this point in a startling way: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Ordinarily we assume
that words are supposed to convey a meaning, transferring ideas from an author to a reader. But the
images that MacLeish’s poem has given us—the globed fruit, the old medallions, the casement ledges,
the flight of birds, the moon climbing, the empty doorway and the maple leaf, the leaning grasses and
the two lights—these do not “mean” anything in a literal, historical, scientific way. What is the meaning,
for example, of a flight of birds? Of a casement ledge where some moss has grown? These things just
are. They are suggestive and even moving, but their meaning is something we impose on them; they
simply exist, and we experience their being more powerfully than any abstract idea. It would be a
mistake to think an empty doorway is somehow a translation of all the history of grief. In much the
same way, poems (MacLeish is asserting) do not mean, but rather have an existence—which takes us to
the third principle:

☞ 3. Poems as unchanging objects represent an organized entity, not a meaning. In this way, poems are
therefore fundamentally different from prose: prose strives to convey meaning; but poems cannot be
perfectly translated or summarized, for they offer a being, an existence, an experience perhaps—not a
meaning..